


We Measure Our Days

by Mount_Seleya



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Babies, Betaed, Bottom Sherlock, Domestic Fluff, Inspired by Fanart, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Morning Sex, Not Britpicked, Parentlock, Rimming, Top John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:25:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mount_Seleya/pseuds/Mount_Seleya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock settles into a life he thought he'd never have — much less want. Sequel to <i><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1443007">Where the Heart Is</a></i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Measure Our Days

**Author's Note:**

> The first scene was inspired by a lovely (and slightly NSFW) [piece of fanart](http://br0-harry.deviantart.com/art/good-morning-292818918) by br0-Harry.
> 
> Thanks to [Solitary_Endeavor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Solitary_Endeavor) for the beta read.

It was the gentle undulation of the mattress that nudged Sherlock awake. A skittering exhalation later, and he felt warm skin slot against the length of his bare back, strong arms wrap around his shoulders and pull him close. Turning his head like a flower seeking the sun, he met John's lips in an awkward kiss, his mind a muzzy wash of bliss.  
  
"Shag?" he offered in a deep, sleep-rough voice a moment later.  
  
John's breath ghosted across Sherlock's philtrum in a soft little burst. "All right," he agreed.  
  
Sherlock hitched his right leg up slightly, just far enough to let John cant his hips forward and wedge the firm, pulsing heat of his morning erection into the sweat-damp space between Sherlock's thighs. John groaned, a low, possessive sound that rose from his throat and made warmth bloom inside Sherlock's chest.  
  
Slowly, so slowly, John began to move, and Sherlock rumbled his contentment. He wasn't hard. He didn't need to be. John was holding him, grounding him, the fingers of his left hand kneading through his sleep-mussed curls. Their lips were scraping, the most the angle would allow, and the bottom of his nose was brushing against the side of John's.  
  
They were breathing each other's breath.  
  
Sherlock lived for these moments of quiet intimacy. When John engulfed his senses, subsumed him with lazy thrusts and needy growls, briefly freeing his body and heart from the thrall of his mind.  
  
John soon shuddered his release, burying his face in the crook of Sherlock's neck to stifle a raw, guttural moan.  
  
"Which was it?" Sherlock asked half a minute later, once John's breathing seemed even enough to allow him to speak  
  
"Helmand," answered John. "The time we were ambushed in Helmand."  
  
Sherlock brought his right hand up and slowly stroked his palm down the warm sandpaper of John's stubbly cheek.

 

* * *

  
  
An hour later, after a grudging but much-needed shower, Sherlock thudded up the stairs to John's old bedroom. Round blue eyes greeted him from overtop the padded rail of the simple beechwood cot pushed against the far wall.  
  
"'Ock," Willa burbled, bouncing up and down as Sherlock quickly strode over. "'Ock, 'Ock, 'Ock."  
  
"Mmm," Sherlock hummed, lifting the child into his arms. "I suppose that's all you can be expected to enunciate." His large hand fitted around the back of her tiny head as she pressed her fat little cheek against his shoulder.  
  
Carrying Willa down into the kitchen, Sherlock set her in the high chair opposite his microscope (now restricted to hair and fibre samples), then turned to rummage in the cupboard for the box of instant porridge. Tiny hands thumped an irregular rhythm on the tray of the high chair as he tore open a sachet and poured its contents into a bowl.  
  
_We're out of milk,_ he was forced to text John a moment later, finding an all-but-empty carton in the fridge.  
  
_I'm about to do a bloody pap smear,_ John replied.  
  
Scowling, Sherlock scrolled through his list of contacts, hastily tapped out, _I need your help._  
  
_Not falling for it this time,_ Lestrade texted back.  
  
With a put-upon sigh, Sherlock selected the final, least desirable option on the list and wrote, _Out of milk._  
  
_Such are the travails of parenthood, dear brother,_ came the curt reply.

 

* * *

  
  
Lifting his eyes from John's laptop, Sherlock looked over at Willa, one corner of his mouth quirking into a half-smile. She was finally napping, an innocent cherub sprawled on the dark leather seat of his armchair, the small plastic farm animals scattered across the living-room floor bearing silent testament to an earlier fit of ennui.  
  
There was something about sitting in John's chair, inhaling the warm, male scent that clung to it even in its owner's absence. Something that made Sherlock's heart swoop and his blood clamour sweetly through his veins. It made him feel strangely weightless, like the dust-motes dancing in the warm, buttery noon sunlight slanting through the windows.  
  
Sherlock let his gaze fall back to the laptop. Slashed his index finger across the trackpad. "Boring, boring, boring," he muttered, hastily reading the subject lines of the e-mails clogging his inbox as they flew past.  
  
After a minute, he abandoned the pursuit, snapping the laptop shut and setting it on the side table with a huff. Looking at Willa again, he said, "Enjoy being oblivious to the staggering stupidity of the human race while you can."

 

* * *

  
  
Sometime past one, the rap of knuckles on wood drew Sherlock's head up from his microscope, and he twisted around on his stool to find Mrs. Hudson hovering in the doorway, a smartly-dressed woman standing behind her.  
  
"Client," Mrs. Hudson informed him, voice thin but pleasant.  
  
"There's been a marked change in consistency and colour from this morning," Sherlock stated.  
  
"Oh, Sherlock, you're not still fretting over the little one's nappies, are you?" Mrs. Hudson asked.  
  
"Yes," Sherlock answered. "Infinitely more interesting than whatever could be troubling a lovelorn estate agent." At this, the prospective client let out an affronted cluck, but Sherlock simply waved his hand dismissively and turned back to his microscope, snapping, "Didn't I tell you not to bother me for anything less than a six?"

 

* * *

   
John set his chopsticks down with a hollow _clack_ and pushed aside his box of takeaway chow mein. "We can still take cases, you know," he said, his eyes seeming tired and deeply-lined as they met Sherlock's across the kitchen table.  
  
"Provided we are actually offered any cases worth our time," Sherlock retorted.  
  
"It's been weeks." John flicked his eyes to the side, wet his lower lip with his tongue, and sighed. "Not since... _well_."  
  
"'Detective Dad,'" Sherlock mouthed flatly.  
  
John released a sharp, wince-like breath, his lips compacting into a tense line. "Yes, that."  
  
Sherlock felt his heart seize at the guilt written on the John's face. He swallowed around the dry knot in his throat. "I don't care what the papers say," he said after a brief, thoughtful pause, pitching his voice gentle and even.  
  
"I never asked you to sacrifice your work," John replied, his eyes finding Sherlock's once more.  
  
"I know."  
  
"That's the last thing I want to do — take away what you love most."  
  
"The work," Sherlock said, holding John's gaze as if his life depended upon it, "almost took whom I love most."  
  
Reaching across the table, John cupped his hand over Sherlock's, squeezed reassuringly. "Moriarty's gone for good." His thumb skated the span of Sherlock's wrist. "And I swear to God I'll never let any harm come to our family."

 

* * *

  
  
In the still of the bedroom, the ragged, stuttering tide of Sherlock's breath seemed cacophonous to his own ears. Every perfect slide of John's mouth, every wicked little twist of tongue, sent a new shockwave of ecstasy shivering through his nerves, made his back bow off the mattress and his hands clutch desperately at John.  
  
Then John urged Sherlock's thighs further apart with steady hands. Dipped his head to lave a slow, deliciously sloppy line from the back of Sherlock's bollocks to the tender, secret place hidden behind them. "Oh, _God_ ," Sherlock whined as the tip of John's tongue worked its way into him, prodding as deep as his current position would allow. His hands spasmed, fingers splaying wide on John's shoulders, grazing the gnarled starburst of his exit scar.  
  
More beautiful than the actuality of sharing a bed with John Watson, perhaps, was the sheer improbability of it. Their bodies were a battlefield, and every moment of pleasure stolen, a triumph in the long, brutal war that was their lives.  
  
Once John had reduced Sherlock to a mewling wreck, he pulled away, returning his mouth to Sherlock's prick. Intrepid fingers ventured between Sherlock's thighs, slipped inside of him, smooth and easy and _good_.  
  
"John," Sherlock gasped. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God."  
  
John hummed with satisfaction around his mouthful, crooked his fingers _just so_ , and Sherlock felt himself shatter. Light exploded behind his screwed-shut eyes, whited out his ceaseless mind for a brief, crystalline instant.  
  
When Sherlock came back to himself, John was pressing soft, absent kisses to the thin skin over his right hipbone. "Christ, you're a sight when you come undone," he remarked, his voice a low rasp. "Turn over, love?"  
  
With a small nod, Sherlock flipped over onto his belly, planted his knees on the bed and levered his arse into the air. There was a dull plastic _click_ , and then two fingers slid into his body once more, slow and slick and filled with unspoken promise, while John's right hand came to rest warmly in the sweat-sheened curve of his sacrum.  
  
"Do you have any idea what you do to me, Sherlock?" John asked, working his fingers in and out.  
  
"Yes," Sherlock replied, a breathless husk of a sound.  
  
After an age of the world had seemingly passed, John's fingers departed, and he took hold of Sherlock's left hip. Guided Sherlock's arse back to meet his straining cock and sank home with a thready moan.  
  
For a moment, John held perfectly still, smoothing his right hand up the scarred plane of Sherlock's back. The way John's breath punched out when his palm halted between Sherlock's scapulae was unmistakably reverent. Sherlock knew that John would likely never get over the astonishing unreality of their lovemaking, never fully reconcile the feeling of being ensconced in warm, living flesh with the memory of dead eyes staring up at him from cold pavement. Of peeling back the coat that long ago became his second skin to find a blossom of blood blooming on his white shirt.  
  
A whimper dislodged itself from Sherlock's throat when John finally began to move. John established a ponderous rhythm, and Sherlock pushed back hungrily, fingers flexing in the pillow on either side of his head. John's palm swept across Sherlock's shoulder, rounded his ribcage, and settled over the knot of scar tissue in the middle of his chest.  
  
John came with a broken groan a few minutes later. Bending down, he allowed his forehead to fall against the nape of Sherlock's neck, scraped open-mouthed kisses over Sherlock's spine as he slowly reclaimed his breath.  
  
" _John_ ," Sherlock warned, feeling his knees start to buckle beneath him.  
  
Pulling out carefully, John flopped over onto his back on the left side of the bed, and Sherlock dropped onto his belly. They laid in companionable silence for a bit, then Sherlock rolled to face John, draping an arm across his chest.  
  
"There's a cottage in Sussex," he murmured, soft as summer rain.  
  
"What?" John blurted out, craning his head around on his pillow to meet Sherlock's gaze.  
  
"From Janine." Sherlock idly circled John's left nipple with his thumb. "In apology for the business with her brother."  
  
John's expression instantly hardened. He swallowed thickly, flicked his tongue across dry, thin lips. "No," he said. "Sell it or let it out. I don't care. We're not living in a house with any connection to — it's _not_ happening."  
  
"It has a garden, John. Rather a large one. And there's a village down the hill. I believe it's what people call 'quaint.'"  
  
"Sherlock Holmes doesn't do quaint," John rebuffed, the corners of his mouth tugging up into a fond smile.  
  
"He doesn't?" Sherlock wondered rhetorically, cocking an eyebrow.  
  
"The tedium would drive you mad. Is that honestly what you see yourself doing? Settling down in a little cottage?"  
  
"I don't know," Sherlock answered, his brows knitting. "I never troubled to make any plans for my life beyond uni." Then, so quietly that it almost went unheard, he added, "I never expected I would need to."  
  
John's smile widened, took on that strange, brittle quality it sometimes did when he was overtaken by emotion. "One day at a time," he said simply, reaching over and cupping his hand around Sherlock's cheek.


End file.
